premieres

With more than 4.2 million downloads per episode, Game of Thrones was the most pirated television show of 2012. However, less than 24 hours after the HBO epic fantasy show's third season premiere, TorrentFreak reported the episode had already been downloaded more than a million times, with one torrent having more than 160,000 simultaneous connections. No torrent has had that many connections since September 23rd, 2008, when more than 144,000 people downloaded the third season premiere of Heroes at once.

TorrentFreak also broke down the locations of the pirates, finding that Australia had the highest piracy rate while London had the highest concentration of pirates amongst major cities. Despite the massive amounts of downloads, the television premiere saw 6.7 million US viewers, despite airing against The Walking Dead's season finale.